Moosewood Muffin Madness

There's nothing like the smell of fresh baked muffins - any time of day. Usually I try to have bananas on hand all the time for cereal, and when they overripe, they go into banana bread. Today I tried out the Moosewood muffin recipe, instead of my standard banana bread, and it looks great! It's nice because there is a standard base, and then you can add whatever variation you want to make your muffin flavor. It also could be made vegan fairly easily by using egg substitute.

What's in it
Wet ingredients:

2 eggs

1/2 C vegetable oil

3/4- 1 C brown sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

Dry ingredients:

2 C flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Additional variations 

(must have one of these along with the wet and dry ingredients):

Apple: Add 2 C grated tart apples and 1 tsp fresh lemon zest to wet ingredients.  Add 1/2 tsp cinnamon to dry ingredients.  Optional: fold in chopped walnuts or pecans into batter.

Banana: Add 1 1/2 C mashed ripe bananas to wet ingredients.  Optional: Fold in chopped nuts or chocolate chips into batter. 

Blueberry-Lemon: Add 1/2 C fresh or frozen blueberries and 1 Tbls fresh lemon zest to wet ingredients.

Zucchini: Add 2 C grated zucchini to wet ingredients, and 1 tsp of cinnamon and 1/2 tsp of ground cardamom to dry ingredients.  Fold 1/2 C raisins or currants, and 3/4 C chopped nuts if you like, into batter.

How it's Made

Preheat oven to 350.

In a large bowl, combine wet ingredients.  In small bowl, combine dry ingredients.  Add appropriate variation ingredients to wet or dry ingredients.  Stir dry ingredients into wet until just combined.  Fold in additional ingredients if necessary.

Spoon batter into oiled standard muffin tins (makes 12), and bake for 20-25 minutes until toothpick comes out clean.  If using mini muffin pans, bake 10-15 minutes.